The Latest Bush Gaffe
When the Decider does something stupid, it's hard not to cringe. People are dying for his stupidity, after all. Last night's speech to the VFW, in which he invoked America's past wars to build his case for staying the course in Iraq, definitively proves that the man isn't just an idiot but also lacks the ability to reason.
His speech writers apparently still think they have a large audience of brainless sheep, who will believe every word that rolls off of the Decider's tongue. His handlers must have had a difficult time finding enough veterans who meet their criteria for his live audience, i.e., solid Bush supporters who will applaud on cue, no matter what sort of drivel he spews forth. After six years of lies, deceit, restrictions of liberty and the most extensive power grab of any administration in American history, even die-hard members of the Republican party listen to the Decider's speeches with a heavy dose of skepticism. The only people who still take at face value anything he says are those with an IQ lower than his approval rating.
The Decider's speech has done nothing to further his cause, but has done much to leave him open for attacks. And the attacks have been coming since the speech aired. Historians, veterans, political analysts... the guy is being bombarded. This represents a major shift in the attitudes of the media and of American citizens over the past few years. There was a time when little the Decider said was heavily scrutinized by any other than his opponents. Now, every word he says is weighed and measured. More people actually fact-check. The media actually point out when he's being an idiot.
People are aware of the fact that Japan was an aggressor against America, not a sovereign nation that we illegally invaded and occupied. Our forces entered Japan peacefully after the war, set up a military administration to temporarily govern a united people, before handing control over to a new government. We weren't trying to control a sectarian conflict that bordered on civil war, nor did we kill, or cause to be killed, millions of Japanese citizens in the process. Yes, we killed a great many when we nuked them twice during the war, but the purpose of those attacks was to end the war. Japan's embrace of their new government was a peaceful process that has no comparison to the situation in Iraq.
People can understand that Korea was an ally who was attacked by another nation. We fought, along with several other nations, to help save them from invaders, not to pacify them. They were a nation already under democratic rule, via a government we helped establish at the end of World War II when we liberated them from Japan. Unlike Japan, they were our friends from the beginning. But like Japan, they were one people, united, and not a nation divided by sectarian conflict. Once again, a success story that has no comparison to the situation in Iraq. Of course, Bush didn't bother to mention that we are technically still at war with North Korea since a peace treaty was never signed, or that the people of that nation have been under the rule of dictators for sixty years because, together with Russia, we chose to split the Korean peninsula into two administrative zones on an arbitrary line, allowing the North to fall under communist rule and setting the stage for their invasion of the South.
People also know that the only valid comparisons to be made between Iraq and Vietnam is that we were lied in to both countries and that we have failed in each. In Vietnam, we were fighting the forces of the North Vietnamese and the guerrillas who supported them, not against sectarian insurgents and terrorists who flooded the country after we invaded. And I don't think you'll find anyone other than George W. Bush, or perhaps some of those brainless morons who still support him, who believes that staying in Vietnam longer would have been a good thing.
The Decider even repeated the tired old mantra that Iraq is the central front in the war on terror, that the terrorists will follow us home if we leave. As if there are no other terror cells in the world itching to kill Americans on American soil. Or as if Pakistan and Afghanistan aren't crawling with Taliban and al Qaeda operatives. I know there are some knuckle dragging Americans out there who lap that sort of thing up -- I've seen their tortuous attempts at English on the internet. But the Decider looks a few degrees dumber each time he says it.
Yes, it seems the people in the administration aren't catching the vibe. The speech was yet another example of twisting history to fit the administration's agenda. In the alternate reality in which the White House currently exists, the people behind the Spin Machine are oblivious to the fact that they no longer have any credibility among Americans with brains. And the Decider, as slow-witted as he is, apparently can't grasp the meaning of the words on the pages his speech writers hand over to him. A person with an ounce of reason would have tossed the speech along with the people who wrote it.
So this desperate attempt by this disastrous president to salvage as much support as he can for continuing his disastrous war is going to end up the same as every other initiative he has undertaken: a disastrous failure.